Guitar Hero: Van Halen

Guitar Hero: Van Halen is the third and final band-specific music rhythm game in the Guitar Hero series. As with the previous games Guitar Hero: Aerosmith and Guitar Hero: Metallica, the game features 25 songs from Van Halen along with 19 additional songs from selected artists that have been inspired by the group. The game was released in retail for the PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii systems on December 22, 2009, in North America, and in February 2010 for PAL regions. However, as part of a promotion with Guitar Hero 5, the game was shipped to Guitar Hero 5 purchasers in North America prior to its retail release. The game was developed by Neversoft with Underground Development assisting Neversoft on developing the Xbox 360 port and published by Activision.

The game has received mostly negative reviews from critics, most of which consider the game’s quality to be greatly inferior to its predecessor, Guitar Hero: Metallica and other games of the series. The reviewers criticized the lack of former Van Halen members, Sammy Hagar, Michael Anthony and Gary Cherone, the limited tracks selected from Van Halen’s discography, the selection of other tracks included in the game, and the general lack of features introduced in the previous band-centric games and Guitar Hero 5.